Thursday, April 8, 2010

4/7 Moment of Zen: Glacier Farming

Cool Thought For A Hot Day: Glacier Farming


It may sound a little like something out of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but the art of growing artificial glaciers has been in practice for hundreds of years in the Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountains of Central Asia (both spurs of the Himalayas). Glacier engineers manage runoff from natural glaciers to use as more accessible water storage. From a land where language has just as many words to describe vertical movement as horizontal movement, water that stays in one place is a luxury not underestimated. Click the picture to read more about how one goes about engineering a glacier, how a glacier can have "gender," and see more pictures of glaciers taken from space.

(Also see: Wired's Gallery of "Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space" where the article's pictures, including the one above, come from.)

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